


Manic Pixie Dream-Boy

by specificlatentheat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: M/M, au to the cursed child, character archetypes are nerdy scorpius and pretty batshit albus, they're loved and brought up like normal boys :)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 23:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20016736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/specificlatentheat/pseuds/specificlatentheat
Summary: Albus Potter is a bit of an enigma, really. To the ire of his teachers, in his first lesson of second year, he set a hoard of ravenous pixies free- and legend says that he was walloped in the head. He’s never been the same since.Scorpius just had the misfortune to be rooming with him.





	Manic Pixie Dream-Boy

His eyes glistened from the back of the classroom, before he made his escapade. He nudged his way forward to the front of the gathered semi-circle of wide eyed students, staring at the cage. It would be so easy, so... right, to just open the latch the tiniest bit, and let them have the chance to choose where they stay. 

He (you know him as Albus) believed that they wouldn’t choose the stuffy September classroom over the wide expanse of trees and shrubs which surrounded the castle. The greenery would suit them finely, he thought, imagining the screeches calming down as their dark, lithe bodies swerved and dodged the reaching branches and the drop of dew from the tips of the morning leaves. Calmer would definitely suit them.

They were squeezed together into a metal barred cage, with gaps only close to large enough for them to escape. It was cruel, the way they’d reach out their small browning claws to reach at their Professor, and in return they would get nothing more than a glance, or sharp reprimand to stop screeching. Albus had to do something- anything, really. 

Scorpius only followed him with his eyes. Standing taller, further back behind the crowd, he followed the pathway created by Albus’ eyes, and scrunched his nose at the desperate, drooling mess which seemed to offend more than one sense. 

His gaze fell back to the boy in question, as he took a shallow breath in before interrupting the lesson with a whine, “Miss, this isn’t humane! They’re obviously suffering because they’re packed in that midgey cage! It smells bloody ghastly too!”

“Potter, language! Pixies are dangerous when they roam free,” the professor answered, almost predicting his question. Maybe she had heard it before. Her eyes flashed behind her glasses as she stood up to her full height, “there are no pixies in the wild anymore because of their murderous intent in their native ecosystem- which you would know if you listened to my lecture- or would you rather I let them free?”

“Well, yes, just because they’re possibly going to injure us doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to have autonomy. All creatures were created free on this earth, and we coexisted in harmony for many years before the movement of mass capture.” Scorpius rolled his eyes, just a little. Albus Potter had found the next thing for him to oddly fixated on all year- last year was an uphill struggle of trying to be the youngest student to do literally everything- like win a match of chess against one of the paintings. Pretty difficult, because nobody had played a match of chess against one of the paintings, or won against one of them, except possibly Dumbledore.

Nobody really knows what he was up to during his years as headmaster.

“Alright Potter, you have two options. Either do this lesson like everyone else in this class, without making a fuss- or do it from a textbook, in a separate room,” she snapped at him, holding the door to the cage closed. 

“Well, you know which option I’m picking.” Albus stated resolutely, unaffected by the gaze of the rest of the classroom. Scorpius took a deep inhale of oxygen. He was mad, Scorpius supposed, probably dropped on his head as a child, at least twice. 

“I’ll give you one last chance then,” their teacher had taken his argumentative statement in the opposite way than it was intended. Albus’ lips turned up in preemptive glee at this confrontation, and everyone was paying attention to see what would happen next. 

Maybe Scorpius would say something. Put his head out on the line in order to stop Albus getting in trouble- if Scorpius just spoke up and agreed with him maybe, it would dissolve the stale, tense atmosphere, just a little bit. But then again, this was Albus Potter. He didn’t care about getting into trouble. 

So Scorpius’ mouth stayed stapled shut, even when Rose Weasley barged past him and made a beeline for the front of the crowd. She smelled like liquorice, but felt like blunt force trauma on his poor side. 

“Albus? Think about this. This is a writing home sort of issue, refusing to sit in a lesson,” she muttered under her breath to him, eyes narrowed as she has a vice grip on his upper arm, “I said I would keep an eye on you this year.”

“Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me,” Albus retorted louder than she did, and a couple sniggers broke out. However, this made their professor whip her head back and purse her lips. Focused on Albus, she took a step forward, ignoring the cage. 

“Right, that’s enough. It’s page 127 in the textbook, get out of my classroom,” without even the chance to explain himself, or argue with her, Albus found himself on the other side of the door. 

If he was paying attention to his actions, he would have realised how petty he looked. Scorpius saw him pivot on his heel angrily and storm out of the classroom, with some sort of fire in his eyes. A terrifying sight, with promise of retribution. Rose looked even more murderous, staring a hole into his back as he left. 

There was a moment of silence when he had left the room- awkward and sluggish, everyone seemed a bit slower than usual. Except the pixies, and one was wrestling with the door to the cage. Scorpius’ eyes trained onto it, and just as it had set itself free, he shouted: “Professor, the cage!”

The cage door slammed shut as the pixie soared into the warm atmosphere. It zipped up to the top of the classroom where wooden bars held up the ceiling, and fluttered into the corner behind a pillar and the bar. More surprised shouts filled the space as the lesson went from bad to worse. 

Their professor let out a screech of terror, and fell over backwards into the cage. Little sharp claws grabbed at her hair and she tried to yank her hair back to no avail. It was a funny sight, if not slightly terrifying how much strength the small creatures had. 

She fumbled with her wand and blasted the cage back with a flash of green. 

“Everyone get out right now!” There was a stampede, and Scorpius let himself be ushered out between a group of girls who were excited to play hooky and Rose Weasley, who looked up towards the pixie in amazement- how it could cause so much chaos by just existing, nobody knew. 

When he got out, Scorpius opted to wait at the door to get back in as soon as possible. He had left his bookbag beside his desk and he would need it for the homework he was planning to get done after class. He was the only one waiting- it was so close to the end of the lesson that most people had just left for their dorms. 

He heard faint arguing, of... Rose and Albus and... someone else? No, it was just the two of them. But they were getting closer. 

“You can’t pull this again, your parents were angry enough last year! Enough to ask my mum to ask me to keep an eye on you! Are you not ashamed of yourself?” She assaulted him with an onslaught of question. 

“Well, no. Do I have anything to be ashamed of?” He asked her, and she sighed, frustrated. 

“You’ve made a big fuss over nothing! And then started something worse! A pixie got loose, you know?” She tried to explain. 

“Well, you were the one who confronted me. If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have said anything back, and she wouldn’t have tried to kick me out, and the pixie wouldn’t have gotten free. So if you want to try and pass around blame and shame, maybe you should look in the mirror.” He replied, and she screamed a bit to herself. 

“No I- don’t try and turn this around. You started it!” She tried to be angry about it but you could hear the smile in her voice somehow. She cleared her throat and got angry again, “you have to go and apologise before she takes it to your parents!”

“Well I haven’t done anything wrong to apologise for, really.” They turned the corner and stood by Scorpius, waiting for the door to the classroom to open, despite Albus’ insistence that he wouldn’t apologise. 

“Well, you could have just not! It wasn’t appropriate for the situation at all.”

“What would have been a more appropriate situation? Right,” Albus turned to Scorpius and rapped him on the shoulder. It was a true test of his acting skill to pretend he hadn’t been listening to their whole conversation, “you were listening to what I was saying in the classroom, right Scorpius?”

Scorpius nodded slowly, pretending that wasn’t all he was thinking of. “Yeah, about the pixies’ cages?” He asked back, tentatively. This whole conversing with Albus thing had probably only happened a couple of times in the year they had spend in the same dormitory. Not for any other particular reason than that Scorpius was awkward- they’d exchange the ‘was there homework?’ question and leave their socialisation there. 

“Yeah! Don’t you think it’s just cruel? Wasn’t I right to speak up about it, really?” He asked, stepping closer and looking him in the eyes. It was piercing and he felt like he was in a bright spotlight- it felt like the answer to this could change his life.

“Well, yes...” Scorpius trailed off awkwardly, looking to the side. He really just didn’t know what to say next to continue this conversation, pixie rights were never a big conversation point at the Malfoy dinner table over summer. 

The two of them looked at him like they were doubting him now. Like he could secretly be an awful person, and secretly believe that pixies don’t deserve rights. This sort of polarised opinion swing when it concerned him was more common than necessary, really. Kinda hurts, he thought. 

Quickly he tried to justify his lacklustre reaction- “I just think there was something else you could have done! It’s in the teaching plan to be done like that, but maybe you could have brought up that they should be kept differently so the lesson would go differently! Maybe in the greenhouse or something! And arguing with the professor about it wouldn’t really change anything because she’s not really involved in their care- you’d have to talk to Hagrid, but I’m sure he wouldn’t disagree if you came to him with a reasonable suggestion-.”

He was rambling. He knew it, but he couldn’t stop. 

At least Albus wasn’t angry. He looked like he was in deep thought while Rose looked like she had had a eureka moment. Cutting him off, she exclaimed, “you’re actually right! Albus, we should try to change something, instead of talking to the professor about it!”

“I thought I was being stupid,” Albus replied bitterly, but more wrapped up in thought. “I think the greenhouse is a good idea because it’s big and it would be easy to section off an area so the pixies could live in relative peace.”

Scorpius had to continue, realising he had possibly set them off on a course of anarchy, letting them go off on a tangent, missing his point entirely, disregarding the Hogwarts staff. Quickly, he began spewing again, “maybe you could start a petition and bring it up to her again! And then you could explain your ideas clearly and she’d have to take it into consideration if you had other people’s backing!”

“That’s brilliant!” Albus said, suddenly, out of his head. He took a scroll out of his satchel and wrote a title- ‘In support of the fair treatment of pixies in an education environment’ and signed below it. He passed it to Rose, and Scorpius panicked- he hadn’t meant for them to do it at that exact moment! 

She signed with a sigh, and then passed it to Scorpius and he looked it over. It felt slightly like signing a death warrant, as he was bringing even more attention to himself. But he couldn’t refuse now. He signed under Rose’s immaculate signature and looked up when the classroom door opened all of a sudden. Their professor came out holding the cage, looking slightly frazzled. 

Albus immediately took to badgering their teacher instead of apologising, what he was there to do in the first place. For some reason, that wasn’t unexpected. His eyes seemed to glow brighter when he was impassioned and she seemed to resonate with his energy, taking it in stride as Rose hurried along beside them as they walked and discussed. 

Scorpius just slipped into the classroom as they left and picked up his bag, reflecting. By the next morning, that petition would be all over the castle walls.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry, realised i basically changed their entire personalities oops. approaching this as an au where they were loved makes me sad because !they could have been so happy! anyways, as always, leave a comment or kudos if you liked it! and if you didn’t, concrit is nice :)


End file.
